Consent to Be Damned
by pingnova
Summary: "So how do we gank something we can't see or touch?"


He glanced up at the sunless sky, hoping for a glimpse of the moon, a flicker of light in the dark. None came. Fingers prickling, he rubbed his arms, huffing warm clouds into the cold air. A foul tangy scent wafted past his nose. He turned, searching for the garbage can or roadkill that would smell so awful. The sidewalk behind him was empty. Bushes rustled across the street, echoing in the silence.

Something was following him.

And he knew it was a something, not a someone. The rotten smell and the raised hair prickling his skin told him so. His neck pulsed, a terrifying reminder that he was alive and vulnerable. He picked up the pace.

The graveyard came and went. Only a couple more minutes until he would reach his neighborhood. His footsteps were light and quick, boots scuffing the cement in his hurry. He winced at the noise.

Sweet, cold breath filled his face. He didn't stop, continued right into a pair of arms, which curled like steel bands around his arms and torso. He froze. No longer cold, but shivering with a sudden rush of hot blood, he opened his mouth to shout.

"You look delicious," the thing said.

Like a dry twig under boot, his neck snapped.

* * *

"God hates us, is what's going on here," Dean said, dropping the contents of his pockets in a bag on the bed. The miscellanea thunked into the old motel mattress and a cloud of dust to rose from underneath the bed. He waved a hand to disperse it, darkly ruminating on their last case. A routine salt and burn, except the ghost had more power than it had any right to. Dean had spent the night trapped in a basement with it and an iron fire poker while Sam took care of its bones by himself.

Sam threw his clothes in his bag and then paused in his packing, grabbing his laptop and opening it to a bookmarked page. "You should take a break."

"A break, Sam? We're hunters, we don't get breaks."

Instead of arguing, Sam began his explanation. "Listen to this: Three disappearances in the last _week_ in this tiny suburb. Articles say they were all regular kids, with lots of friends and good grades. They all went to the same high school: FZS."

Dean took a silent moment to collect himself and rubbed his forehead to stave off a headache. He began to nod. That was a pretty clear connection. "What are you thinking? Vengeful spirit? Changeling?"

Sam turned his expectant gaze back to his laptop, clicking through a few tabs. "So far I haven't turned up anyone who died there, and they're too old for a changeling."

"All kids look the same to me," Dean mumbled. "What makes you think this is our sort of thing?"

Sam turned the laptop screen around. The small town news site listed headlines such as _Freak weather this weekend_ and _Report: unexplained crop failure hits hard_.

"Demonic omens?" Dean said. "I thought Crowley was laying off, with Leviathans all over."

Sam shrugged. "Does it matter why? It's killing kids."

Dean pursed his lips. He would like a straightforward case, evil demons killing innocent kids. In comparison to taking down a whole host of impossible-to-kill Leviathans, or even dealing with a persistent ghost, it might be tame enough to be considered a break. "Okay, let's check this out."

* * *

"...and I told her, 'This is for you!' For some reason that made her throw up."

"Sock, I think it was the dead squirrel that made her throw up." Jonathan shook his backpack open and fished his books out of his locker, shoving them into the bag in no particular order, so they ended up lengthwise and right side up, crushing all his papers into the bottom of the bag.

He wasn't concerned about talking to Sock during the rush to get out of school at the end of the day. The hallways were deafening with shouts and general chatter, and everyone was absorbed enough in packing and socializing to ignore Jonathan talking to the air. Sock, unfortunately, took this as an invitation to squeeze in every conversation he hadn't had during the day into a quick five minutes. Jonathan only had a taste of his gruesome childhood stories, many of which seemed to center around a neighbor Sock had tormented with dead things, but that was enough to know he didn't need to hear any more.

"It's hard to catch squirrels, I thought she would be impressed with that sort of thing," Sock reasoned.

Jonathan rolled his eyes. He closed his locker door, only to find a concerned Zack Melto behind it. He looked like he was about to ask Jonathan who he was talking to. Jonathan cut over him.

"Zack! What's up!"

Zack rubbed his neck sheepishly. "Not much. I was just over here to give you this, but you were already talking to someone…"

"Yep," Jonathan laughed nervously. "You just missed them. What were you going to give me?"

Zack handed him a slip of paper. It was for an invitation for a costume party that weekend, at Zack's house. It advertised apple cider and games. Jonathan figured every liquid would be spiked to hell, if Zack's football team was going to be there. He stitched his eyebrows together.

"Why are you inviting me to this? I completely forgot about Halloween."

"I just figured you'd want something to do during the weekend."

Jonathan thought about the football team. "Who all is going to be there?"

Zack ticked people off on his fingers. "The boys, Jordan, Alex, Abby, Mia, Lil…"

Jonathan stopped listening at Lil. She was a classmate who he had noticed last year. Like him, she was quiet and kept to herself. She was, well, attractive, he had to admit, and she didn't take any bullshit. He hated to admit that he maybe had a tiny crush on her. Sock noticed his cheeks warm slightly.

"Ooh, someone you like?" he teased.

Jonathan just coughed to interrupt Zack and wordlessly tell Sock to shut up. He waved the slip of paper in thanks and began to turn away.

"Thanks, Zack," he said. "I'll see you there."

He didn't particularly want to go for the socializing and he wasn't positive he was going to bother dressing up. But if he got there early enough, he could probably get free candy and spike-free cider. Plus, a chance to see Lil. He could scope her out a bit more, before he made a decision about actually talking to her. Yeah. That was it. Play it safe.

He joined the students streaming through the hallway, hefting the bag onto his back. Sock trailed behind him, looking perturbed as bodies phased through him. Beyond the doors to the buses, a pair of men in official looking suits strode towards the entrance. The crowd flowed around them and they cut through uninterrupted. Jonathan was so distracted by how out of place they looked—suits and ties on school grounds when it wasn't prom?—that he collided with one of them.

An electronic screech filled the air as he hit the ground and he winced, more at the noise than the pain. The man reached into his back pocket and looked quizzically at a bright, screaming device. Then he flipped a switch and the noise stopped. He looked shrewdly at Jonathan and offered him a hand.

Jonathan said, "I got it." On his feet he apologized and made to leave, but a hand came down on his shoulder in a grip that told him he was in trouble.

"Kid," the shorter one said. He flashed a badge too fast for Jonathan to read. "We'd like to ask you some questions."

"Is this about the disappearances?" Jonathan shifted. He had nothing to do with those, so he shouldn't be nervous. He was anyway. "I don't know anything about those. I have to catch my bus."

"We'll be quick," the taller one promised. "This is important. They were your classmates, right?"

Jonathan nodded stiffly.

"Then you can definitely help, we just need to know a few things…"

* * *

Sam and Dean commandeered a conference room in the administrative offices of the high school once they explained to the principal that they were sent by the FBI to look into the recent disappearances of FZS students. They left the kid inside alone for awhile to let him sweat it out.

The EMF meter went wild near Jonathan, which was the name he had volunteered when they asked. Sam waved it around outside the conference room to demonstrate the low amount of EMF they could read even this far from the kid.

"Possession?" Dean ventured, glancing through the conference room window. Jonathan didn't look concerned, or even like he was about to be questioned by two federal agents about the disappearances of his classmates. He looked annoyed, if anything. Slouched in his seat, lips lightly pursed, legs spread. Every couple of minutes, he looked to his side, intent on something Dean couldn't see.

"Very possible," Sam replied, pocketing the meter. "That would have to be one hell of an angry ghost."

"Or just a happy demon."

They entered the conference room and took their seats. Sam pulled out the EMF meter. They were going to go into this straight. If there was that much EMF around the kid, there was no way he hadn't noticed anything suspicious. Sam turned it on and allowed the electronic screech to fill the room for a few seconds.

Jonathan winced and sat up in his seat. "What is that?"

"It's an EMF meter," Sam explained. "It detects electromagnetic charge in the air, which is the stuff ghosts create. You have a pretty high reading. Mind explaining that?"

Jonathan did that thing again where he glanced to the side. This time, Dean noticed it looked like he was silently communicating with the turn of a mouth and a flick of the eyes, like he did with Sam. The kid focused back on Sam and Dean.

"Try that thing again," he said.

Sam flipped the switch, visibly bracing for a scream, but none came. He hit the meter a couple times to see if it was fritzing, but no, it just didn't sense anything.

"What did you do?" Dean demanded.

"Your meter isn't sensing me, it's sensing someone else. I just told him to go away."

"Him?" Sam echoed.

For the first time, Jonathan looked uncomfortable. "I'm not sure you'd believe me if I told you, even if you have that thing."

Dean smirked, remembering any number of the crazy cases they encountered. "Try us."

"I'm not sure I _should_ tell you." Jonathan watched them with a dark, closed off gaze. He wasn't used to trusting anyone. "There's no way you're actually FBI agents. You could be anybody."

Dean nodded. "Fair point."

Sam elbowed him under the table instead of saying _Try not to encourage him to clam up_.

"It's okay if you tell us," Sam soothed. "It's our job to investigate paranormal incidents that regular law enforcement isn't designed to handle."

"So you're ghost hunters. Like the Ghostfacers?"

Dean opened his mouth to let Jonathan know what screwballs the Ghostfacers were and Sam elbowed him again. "Yeah, except we're professionals, not reality TV personalities," Sam said.

Jonathans lips thinned and he glanced between them for a silent minute. He sighed and pushed a hand through his bangs, looking to the side again.

"Okay, but you can't tell anyone else."

Sam and Dean nodded grimly.

"A month ago, a demon started haunting me," Jonathan said.

Dean drew back from the table, eyebrows raised. Whatever he expected, it wasn't that. "It haunts you? Like a ghost?"

Sam made his _I'm worried and thinking hard about why_ face and Dean had to agree. That didn't sound like a demon at all. If a demon was following this kid, it would have just possessed him and gone about its merry malicious way. But haunting implied it was just hanging around making spooky noises.

"Yeah." Jonathan watched them carefully. "Is that not what demons do?"

"Normally," Sam said. "They possess people and cause havoc."

Jonathan scoffed. "He can't possess me. He can't really do anything." At that he smiled, like he had just told private joke.

Kids were disappearing and probably dying, and the kid with the key to the answer was amused. Dean clenched his fist. "Listen, whatever that thing is, it's connected to the disappearances of your classmates. If we're going to find them, you need to tell us everything."

Jonathan looked startled, like they had accused him of dressing up as a clown and breakdancing on the table. "He's not connected to that. He can't even touch anything, how could he make someone disappear? You can't even see him when he's right here."

"It's here?" Dean gripped the gun at his belt.

"Yeah," Jonathan continued, oblivious. "But he's invisible and he can't touch or talk to anyone but me, so he can't be the thing taking people."

"Why are you defending him?" Sam asked, a note of genuine curiosity in his voice.

"Because if you're really the paranormal police, and if what's taking people is really something like that, then you should go after what's a danger to people, not some harmless demon," Jonathan said, syllables drawn out to emphasize the 'duh' factor.

Sam hid a grin behind his fist as Dean smiled dangerously. He didn't appreciate the tone. In a quick motion, he withdrew the silver flask of holy water from his suit coat.

"Then if nothing malicious is going on here, you won't mind if we test you quick."

Jonathan pushed a couple inches away from the table, wary and confused, but he nodded. Dean flicked the flask, splashing the kid across the face. He blinked water out of his eyes and pulled up a sleeve to wipe his cheeks.

"Are you satisfied?" he sighed.

Sam met his eyes. They needed to pull back and regroup.

* * *

"There's no way that thing is a demon." Dean slammed the door of the Impala. "We should call Bobby."

"Already on it," Sam said from the passenger seat, cell phone pressed against his ear.

The kid was convinced that thing couldn't hurt him. It would only be a matter of time before it turned on him, Dean thought as he pulled out of the parking lot. It was never a coincidence that two supernatural things were in town at the same time.

Sam snapped the phone shut. "Bobby's looking into it."

Dean nodded.

"He said it's been haunting him for a month. The disappearances started last week. That's a pretty significant gap."

"Yeah, I noticed."

"You think they might be unrelated?"

"Not a chance," Dean said. "If anything it might have been, I dunno, dormant. Or biding its time."

Sam pursed his lips in thought. "Jonathan seems to know it pretty well, he could list off a few of its abilities right away. He would have to be pretty close to the monster."

"Right, and that's why we're going to follow him."

* * *

Lil had seen them since she was a child. Things no one else saw. They were scary sometimes, and other times, just confused. Specters, spirits, ghosts, call them what you will. Those bits of a person that were leftover when they met mortality head on.

She could see them. And they could feel her.

Things were attracted to her because she had a bad habit of making eye contact with invisible beings. It was difficult to avoid staring at something that floated, glowed, looked human but grotesquely distorted with mortal wounds or supernatural mutations. Even with a lifetime of practice ignoring them, she still made mistakes. She was only human.

Her latest mistake was named Jojo.

"What are you staring at?" Jojo said, leaning into Lil's line of sight. Her face was blank, like the answer was of no consequence to her. Lil wondered why she asked.

Lil muttered, "Britney," hoping no one else heard her talking to nothing. Especially Britney. She sat across the room, picking at the surface of her desk, eyes half lidded, radiating boredom and a certain restrained sense of danger.

Jojo turned in the air to stare at Britney too. After a few minutes of that, she looked back at Lil.

"Britney's always been a monster?"

Lil shook her head slowly, eyes back on the teacher. Britney's face was melting like it was wax. Underneath, in the glimpses she could catch, was another face, gaunt and warped like a corpse. The lined, ragged teeth bit into Britney's manicured nails as it watched the teacher. As Britney chewed her nails, eyes flicking across the room, Lil realized what the sense of danger was.

Obviously, this was not Britney, and obviously, it was very, very hungry.

She stared too long. Its eyes flickered her way, a weird substance oozing from the socket and dripping on the desk. Lil sucked in a breath and refocused on the teacher, pretending to take notes. She felt eyes boring into her, making a decision.

Jojo growled in its direction but didn't move from her spot at Lil's shoulder. No one noticed the supernatural stare-off, because these were things that only Lil could see. These were things that only she had to deal with.

She stared too long at her notebook. The teacher repeated her name and Lil couldn't answer her question. Not-Britney smirked.

* * *

He should try talking to her now. He shouldn't wait for the party. The party could be stage two. He should be proactive and do this naturally. Just act natural. Act natural. Act natural.

Students milled outside classrooms, waiting for teachers to arrive between classes. The squeak of sneakers on linoleum and the low hum of quick conversations served as a backdrop to Jonathan's approach. Lil was halfway in her locker, silently watching another girl down the hall, who stared back just as intently. Jonathan cleared his throat when he was a couple feet away, hoping he wasn't interrupting something. The visual standoff was a little unnerving.

"What?" Lil turned around with a glare, deflating when she met his gaze. "Oh, it's just you."

He made a questioning noise in his throat, inclining his head in the direction of the other girl. What was that all about?

"She's been looking at me funny all week," Lil said. "Purposefully bumps into me in the hallway. I think she's threatening me."

"Why?"

Lil took a second to look regretful, like she said too much. "I don't know."

Jonathan nodded. She looked like she knew why, but if she didn't want to tell him, he didn't blame her. They weren't exactly besties. Just classmates. Acquaintances, at best.

"So about this weekend," he started, transparently switching topics to something she might be more talkative about, "I heard you're going to Zack's Halloween party too."

"Yeah," she said without enthusiasm. "He's a bit of a bonehead but his mom makes really good Special K bars, have you ever had one?"

He hadn't. Caught a bit off guard by her apparent familiarity with Zack's family, he had to ask. "Do you know Zack well?"

She shrugged. "We were in scouts together in elementary school, so our parents are friends. I've been over to his place a couple times."

Oh. Phew. Nothing romantic.

"I'll be at the party too," Jonathan offered. "See you there?"

A slight upturn of the lips. She hefted her bag in preparation to leave and agreed. "See you there."

* * *

Dean put down his Slurpee when Jonathan broke away from the crowd flowing out of the school's entrance. He climbed into the bus on the end of the lineup and when it pulled away, so did the Impala. Jonathan got off on a street corner and disappeared into one of the carbon copy suburban homes lining the road. Dean put on the parking brake just down the street, slowly sucking up the last of the Slurpee as he watched the house.

Wherever Jonathan went, so did his "demon." They needed to keep an eye on him.

His pocket vibrated. Tossing the empty cup into the back seat, he flipped open the phone with a quick, "Yeah?"

"Bobby got back to me," said Sam. Across town, he was settled into a study booth at the local library, attempting research while the wifi cut in and out. Leave it to small towns to fall behind technologically. "He says that Jonathan could be telling the truth, what's following him could really be a demon. There's not a lot of info on it, but there are a subtype that only one human can see: the person it appears to. They don't really have much power unless the person consents to possession."

"Consent?" Dean interjected. "Since when do demons care about permission?"

"Maybe it's like Crowley's deals," Sam mused, lowering his voice as children began to filter past him on the way to storytime. "You've got to consent to be damned."

"How do we know for sure it's what's following him?"

"We'd have to ask him. The demon would be trying to lead him to suicide."

Dean squeezed his eyes shut. Great. They left a kid with a literal devil on his shoulder, one that was probably persuading him to eat rat poison as they spoke. "Okay, I got the kid, you keep digging into the disappearances."

He was already in his FBI suit and tie. Approaching the house at a sedate pace, he shot a wave and a charming smile at a staring neighbor. At the door, he knocked twice, and it opened almost immediately.

It was Jonathan, in the same getup he wore every day, glare settled on his face. "You're following me," he accused.

"I don't think we were properly introduced before," Dean said. He flashed his badge again. "Special Agent Lars Ulrich."

Jonathan rolled his eyes. "Okay, _Lars_." He clearly didn't believe Dean. "Leave me alone. I told you everything I know about the disappearances, which is nothing."

"That's not why I'm here. Has your demon asked you to hurt yourself?" When Jonathan scoffed, Dean's face hardened. "I'm not joking around here." And he wasn't. Whether or not the demon was related to the disappearances, it was a monster trying to harm a human, so he wasn't going to drop it, no matter how much the kid insisted they were all buddy-buddy.

Jonathan tried to close the door but Dean caught it, easily holding it open as the kid continued to make a few futile attempts.

He said, "It doesn't matter, nothing he does works, because I'm not going to kill myself."

"So it _has_ asked you to commit suicide. Why would you want to keep something like that around?"

Jonathan grit his teeth. "Can you please call _it_ a _him_. He's a person you know."

Dean was a little startled, but he was careful not to show it. Jonathan was defending a monster that wanted him dead and damned to Hell, treating it like any other human friend. Was the deception that they were friends another tactic to get close enough to convince Jonathan to take the leap? There was no other explanation. Demons didn't have human companions without an ulterior motive, like Ruby. Dean blinked and Jonathan looked a bit like a younger Sam, passionately fighting Dean on Ruby's behalf, deeply believing in the humanity of something inhuman.

He smiled, a tight expression that was all sharp edges, and forged onward, leaning against the doorjamb. "We can help you, Jonathan. You're messing with something you don't know anything about and I don't want you to get hurt."

Dean knew he lost Jonathan when it took him a few moments to reply. All he said was, "I won't be hurt."

Dean nodded, not to agree, but to say goodbye. The door slammed and Dean was back in the Impala, hands at 10 and 2. Almost cosmically, he was in the position to keep the kid from making the biggest mistake of his life. He would be damned if he didn't do everything in his power to help him.

* * *

"So how do we gank something we can't see or touch?"

This motel room was a step up from the usual. It was the only lodging in the small town and was managed by two very cleanly, homebody owners. The room was decorated like a nursing home, with lace, faded curtains, and pastel plastics, but the beds were cushy, the drain wasn't clogged, and the shag carpet had been recently replaced. It smelled fresh, not dusty or rotten, and what they could see of the walls were a crisp white.

Most of the wall facing the beds was covered in tacks and paper. Sam took a step back from the evidence, arms crossed, brow furrowed as he hazarded a guess. "Maybe when it's possessing a host. We could trap it while it's inside and exorcise it."

Dean smirked. _While it's inside_. "Kinky."

Sam frowned. "We're talking about minors, Dean. High schoolers."

Dean raised his hands in mock surrender and turned away, chastised.

"The only person who can see or interact with the demon is that kid, Jonathan. So it would have to posses him," Sam mused. "How do we get him to consent to possession?"

Dean wiped his hands together. "I've got a couple persuasion techniques we could try."

"I think we'll need something subtle," Sam flatly replied.

Dean smiled and shrugged, flopping on a bed and kicking off his shoes. "Let me know when you puzzle that out, Einstein. I'm tucking in early."

"Wait." Sam turned from the wall to the bed, finger pointed accusingly. "You said it seemed like they were friends."

Deans face was smushed into the pillow, his hands curled around the blanket. "Mmhmm," he confirmed.

"Like me and Ruby were."

A long pause. "...Hmm," Dean confirmed once again, muffled by the luxurious down. This was not something he wanted to talk about whilst snuggled in the comfiest bed he had the pleasure to lie on in a long time.

"So if Jonathan was in danger…"

Dean rolled over to face Sam. "We're going to threaten him?" Not that it was a bad idea, just surprising considering who it was coming from. He was shocked to even hear Sam speak Ruby's name.

Sam pursed his lips. He knew what Dean was thinking. "If it'll save a kid, yeah."

Dean nodded and buried his face again. If it'll save a kid.

* * *

Someone knocked on Jonathan's door. He opened it and greeted the person, disappearing into the house and emerging with a T-shirt that said "THIS IS MY COSTUME", which he quickly covered with his usual gray hoodie. He and the newcomer walked around the corner. Dean followed slowly, watching them join a flood of costumed high schoolers at a house down the street. Kids were in the front yard playing with beanbags, and through the big open windows Dean saw orange decorations, people bobbing for apples, and a broad shouldered teen nervously pushing someone with a flask away from a punch bowl.

Huh. Halloween party.

Two rings. Dean flipped his phone open. "Sam?"

"The newspaper." Sam got right into it. "Have you seen it?"

"No?" Reading newspapers was more Sam's thing. He had been busy being on the lookout outside Jonathan's really boring really normal house. The neighborhood was full of families with frolicking children and dogs. It seemed that even the demon haunting one of the residents wouldn't interrupt this blissful suburbia.

Truthfully, it was driving him a little crazy. It was a little too close to a home he once had.

"Someone, or some _thing_ , has been digging up graves," Sam said. "They weren't reporting on it since it was under investigation but the case has gone cold now, they've got no suspects."

"I'm betting on it being a something," Dean agreed. "Maybe our little demon?"

"But why would a demon be digging up graves? And how? Isn't it completely incorporeal?"

"Maybe Jonathan's been consenting to some moonlight possessions? Or maybe… it's something else. We can check it out once it's dark."

* * *

Dean hefted the shovel on his shoulder into the crook of his arm, rubbing his hands together and blowing on them to encourage circulation. His breath fogged in the air, a reminder that he was warm and alive, standing beside the disturbed grave of someone long gone.

"Let's get digging," Sam said and pushed his shovel in the dirt. Dean followed suit.

They weren't sure what they would find, given that it was an invisible demon somehow digging up graves, but hitting a pair of jean clad legs wasn't one of their predictions. Dean cleared the dirt around the leg. It was bloodied, connected to a bare foot. They uncovered the body, which was soaked in red, torn into as if eaten by an animal, buried too shallowly to be officially buried in the grave. Sam crouched and squinted at what he could make out of the face.

"High schooler, definitely." He pointed to the logo on the breast of the torn letter jacket concealing a bare ribcage. "That's the FZS logo. This is the most recently missing kid."

"Great!" Dean grinned. "Found 'em. What the hell is he doing here?"

"Decomposing," Sam said dryly, standing. "He's been eaten, Dean. Demons don't eat people."

They both paused, staring at each other in the dark. If it wasn't Jonathan's demon, what was it? Had they been following a false trail this whole time? Was the demon really unrelated to the disappearances?

They decided to check the other disturbed graves. Each yielded a dead high schooler. Dean stuck his shovel in the dirt and ran his aching hands through his hair.

"What eats people and hides them in graveyards?"

Then it dawned on him. Adam and his mom. His dead body in the mausoleum and a carbon copy of him out walking, talking, and eating.

"Ghoul," Sam whispered.

They booked it to the Impala.

* * *

Decorations hung from every available surface. Plastic skeletons, paper ghosts. Streamers, cottony webbing, rubber spiders on string. The heavy air was wet with body heat and smelled faintly of apples and spice. Jonathan stood tense in a corner, not regretting his choice to attend enough to make any complaints verbally to Sock, who was having a blast listening in on conversations and weaving throughout the house admiring the costumed crowd.

Sock pointed at a girl in a red cape with horns on her head. "That's not even close to what Mephistopheles looks like."

Jonathan grunted. He was zeroed in on someone else. Lil sat on an armchair in the living room. She tipped her head back and laughed at something someone said. The soft curve of her neck glowed in the warm orange lights strung throughout the house.

Cheeks red, Jonathan wound up tight when Sock leaned in to tease him again. He never got a chance to open his mouth. Lil excused herself and disappeared somewhere just as a familiar duo burst into the hallway.

Sam and Dean were wide eyed, covered in dirt, and pale, with spots of pink high on their cheeks. Chests heaving, they shuffled through the partygoers, who stared like God himself had ascended. Dean slammed a hand on the wall by Jonathan's head. Jonathan didn't flinch. He narrowed his gaze. Their interruption was completely unwelcome. For a couple minutes he had felt downright normal. Now Ghostfacer one and two were back in his face.

"What are you doing here?"

"Saving you," Dean said in a deep growl. "We need everyone in one room. The monster looks like the last person it ate. It's here."

Jonathan paled as his stomach lurched. "Ate?"

"Everybody get into the living room," Sam was shouting, none too gently herding people in that direction.

Jonathan pushed Dean away. Couldn't he catch a break from supernatural junk for five minutes? It was bad enough that Sock followed him everywhere.

"You couldn't have waited until the party was over?" he said. "I was actually having a good time."

Dean stepped forward again with an ugly sneer. "Kid—" He never got to finish his sentence. A raw scream grew in volume and abruptly died. Jonathan paled further.

"Lil."

Dean glanced sharply at him and took off towards the sound. Wary partygoers parted to let Sam, Dean, and Jonathan to the backyard door. They pushed aside curious people clinging to the door frame in time to see Lil's shoes disappear around the corner of the house.

* * *

Dean launched himself off the step and pounded around the house, taking the ghoul to the ground with a full body tackle, forcing it to drop the girl. Assaulted with the sickly sweet scent of rot, he blinked just long enough for it to get a punch in. The face it wore was twisted into a mask of anger and derision as it continued its assault, grabbing his face and smashing it into the ground. Blinded, he lashed out with a fist, catching it in the chin, grinning at its howl of pain.

Sam appeared in time to haul it off Dean. In a full body spasm, it kicked Dean in the face, bringing him to the ground again. He allowed himself a moment to catch his breath, inhaling and exhaling the earthy flavor of suburban lawn. It smelled nicer than graveyard dirt, he decided. Fresher.

"Dean!" Sam grunted. "A little help here?"

Dean hauled himself off the grass. Behind him, Sam tussled with a spitting ghoul, and in front of him was a crowd of teenagers dressed as every imaginable monster and movie character, faces glowing with phone screens as they recorded the fight.

"Hey!" Dean waved his hand drunkenly, stumbling. "Stop that!" If this got online, they would be back on the FBI's most wanted list, not to mention publicity's a bitch when your job demanded discretion.

As one, the phones all died. There was a collective moan and a few shouts of disbelief. Dean raised an eyebrow and turned his hand over, examining it. What a great time for his latent psychic abilities to make themselves known.

"That was me." Jonathan approached Dean and looked to the side. "Or rather, it was Sock. Thanks," he said to the invisible being.

"Dean!" Sam shouted again.

"Right, thanks," Dean said to the kid. Then he turned back to the fray.

Sam had the ghoul momentarily pinned under his considerable bulk. He gestured with his head to where a machete lay just out of his reach. With two strides Dean scooped the blade off the ground and swung like a golf pro for the neck, relishing in the answering gurgle and splurt as he severed the ghoul in two.

Somebody screamed high enough to make a kettle jealous and suddenly the backyard was cleared of bystanders. Aside from Jonathan, who was crouched over the girl the ghoul had been dragging off. He pat her face, gently calling her name.

"Lil," he said. "Come on, don't be dead. We just started talking."

"Ah, young love." Dean righted himself and smirked as Sam hopped to his feet, flicking blood from his face.

"Like you'd know anything about that," Sam accused, pointedly referring to a string of one night stands that dated back to high school.

Dean cuffed his arm, turning towards the Impala. "Come on, we've got a mess to clean up before the cops show up."

* * *

"Thanks for helping us clean up," Dean said to the back seat, glancing in the rear-view mirror.

Jonathan looked back, streetlights passing over the hands curled in his lap. "It's the least I can do for you, since you saved Lil. I've been pretty unhelpful, I figure I could do this at least."

Sam snorted and Dean agreed. Burying a body was a hell of a thing to volunteer as an apology. The headless corpse of the ghoul bumped around in the trunk as the Impala approached the cemetery.

"So this is what you guys do," Jonathan said, gesturing to encompass everything that had just happened. "You look for crazy stuff and kill it."

"We're hunters," Sam offered.

"Like the Ghostfacers," Jonathan surmised.

Dean grimaced. "Again with the Ghostfacers? We are so much better than those bozos."

"Looks like we're here!" Sam cut in before anyone started in on the character of the Ghostfacers.

The cemetery was misty and dark, with only the light of the half-moon and faraway street lights to illuminate the holes dug in the grass. Dean flipped open his phone. 2 AM. It was definitely past his bedtime. He made eye contact with Sam and nodded. They would get this over with quick.

"Help me with this," Sam said as he popped the trunk and grabbed one end of the body wrapped in tarp. Jonathan jumped to and grabbed the other end, gingerly lifting and following Sam to an open grave. Dean grabbed the machete, which was still sticky with ghoul blood, and marched after them, steeling himself.

Sam and Jonathan deposited the body beside the grave. As Jonathan backed up Dean grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms to his side. As the kid took a breath to shout, he brought the blade to his neck, feeling it bob over his Adam's apple.

"We can't let you go," he said. "You know too much about us."

Sam kicked the body into the grave and gestured for Dean to get on with it. Dean shook Jonathan, who gasped, and angled the blade at his throat. He almost felt bad about terrifying the kid, but they needed to get the demon out of hiding. Even though it wasn't connected to the disappearances, it was preying on Jonathan. They couldn't leave the kid like that.

Dean spoke quietly into Jonathan's ear. "I'm going to kill you, and we'll bury you here. No invisible demon buddy to help you."

Jonathan's breath hitched and he relaxed in Dean's grip. "Actually," he said in mock cheerfulness, "his demon buddy is in the house."

Dean grinned. "Good."

The demon in Jonathan's body made a questioning sound that broke off when Dean kicked it away with a solid foot to the lower back. It stumbled forward, turning back to Dean with a growl, and paused as Sam began the incantation.

" _Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus_ …"

"That itches," it said. It sniffed once and coughed, then resumed its lunge at Dean.

Dean ducked and caught it around the waist, pinning it with its head over the open grave. Sam continued the incantation, but it didn't seem to be doing anything. He raised his fist and its face darkened.

"You won't kill Jonathan!"

"Like that's not what you're doing!" Dean shot back, and brought his fist down for the punch.

The demon caught the fist, face distorted in anger. It pushed and bucked Dean off, tossing him to the frozen ground. He rolled to stand beside Sam, watching the demon get to its feet.

"You don't know what you're talking about," it said. "I'm just doing my job."

"So are we," Sam said. "We're sending you back to Hell so you can never haunt Jonathan again."

"And how are you going to do that?" it challenged. "I'm pretty sure you just tried and exorcism and that _tickled_. I don't think I'm the kind of demon you usually deal with."

"A demon's a demon," Dean asserted. "We'll figure you out."

The demon studied them, eyes bright in the dark, standing awkwardly in Jonathan's meatsuit. His eyes were clear and human, not pools of black. It was unnerving. "You weren't really going to kill Jonathan, you just wanted me to possess him."

They didn't say anything, which was all the confirmation the demon needed.

"If I promise to go to Hell, will you two leave him alone?"

Sam tensed. "Is this like a demon deal?"

"A what?" The demon shook its head. "Probably not. Just a promise."

"Well," Dean glanced at Sam, who shrugged. If it was that easy… "Yeah, if you go to Hell, we'll leave Jonathan alone."

"How will we know for sure you're gone?" Sam said.

The demon vaguely gestured towards them, miming a small device. "You've got that electromagnetic detector thing. Just use that." It took a few steps away from the open grave, closer to Sam and Dean, who tensed. "Catch him," it said. Then Jonathan's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he fell.

Dean started forward but didn't get there before he hit the ground. He winced. Jonathan would probably feel that.

Jonathan groaned and propped himself up on his elbows, eyes fluttering, like he was figuring out how to work them again. He managed to pull away from Dean when he tried to grab him.

"Don't touch me," he muttered.

"Hey, you good?" Sam asked, crouching on his other side. "You took a tumble there."

"I'm fine, no thanks to you." Jonathan pulled himself crosslegged, glancing from Sam to Dean with open disdain. "You tried to kill me! And Sock!"

"Sock?" Dean repeated.

"The demon," Jonathan replied. "You tried to kill him or something."

"We tried to exorcise him," Sam corrected. He grabbed Jonathan under the arms and hauled him to his feet, brushing dirt from his sleeves. "He's gone now, anyway. You'll be fine, now."

"Yeah for like, tonight," Jonathan spat. "You can't get rid of him, he comes and goes to Hell whenever he wants. That promise means nothing."

Dean puffed out his cheeks and threw his hands in the air. "So there's no getting rid of this guy, Sock?"

"No," Jonathan answered. "Even if there was, I wouldn't let you guys get rid of him. He's my friend."

Dean rounded on Jonathan. It was just as they feared. "Demons are no one's friends, kid. He's here to get you killed. Doesn't that scare you?"

"Of course it does! How could it not? But just because he's my friend doesn't mean I'll jump off a cliff just because he does." Jonathan curled his hands into fists, eyes narrowed. "Thanks for saving Lil, now leave. You think I have no idea what I'm messing with? You don't know anything about me or Sock."

"Okay, fine!" Dean grabbed his shovel and machete from the grass and headed for the Impala. "Don't call us if he turns out to be a raging killing machine!"

Sam grimaced. He dug a piece of paper out of his pocket and scribbled a number, handing the paper to Jonathan, who crumpled it immediately but didn't throw it away. "Don't listen to him, I understand that it's complicated. If you ever need help with the demon or… any other monster, call us."

"Okay, bye."

Sam smiled tightly, frowned, then smiled again, leaving quickly.

In the Impala, Dean couldn't care less that they were leaving on bad terms. Whatever happened to that kid, he brought it upon himself. The car dipped as Sam folded into the passenger seat. Dean briefly thought back to Ruby, then squashed the thought. She had no bearing on how this went.

Sam immediately shattered his denial. "This is about Ruby and I."

Dean started the car a little harder than he needed to. "He doesn't know what could happen."

"We don't know either, Dean."

"That's rich, coming from you."

Sam huffed a breath, resting his head against the window, eyes on the road that stretched ahead of them. "Let's just keep an eye out for anything that might permanently banish an invisible suicide demon. If the time ever comes that he doesn't see them as friends anymore, he'll call. He's a smart kid."

Dean had to disagree with the smart bit, but he stayed silent as he drove. They tried. By God, did they try. And that was all they could do. They were only human.


End file.
